The following was drawn together from meditation on the Four Treasures of the Tuatha De Danaan inspired by events at the 1998 UK Lughnasadh Camp and by conversation with other Druids on Rites of Passage, which set bells ringing in my head on a subject I have considered for some time.

There are today lots and lots of social and cultural problems that need solving but there appear to be two crucial paradigms that particularly attract my attention. I’d like to share them with you all. First a Bardic poem written by Anghus in 1997 ‘Mists and the Stone’,

I have seen a land that is greenFar away where many dreams have beenI have known a land that is homeAll but lost in the Mists and Stone.

It's not possible to give a date when the concept of reincarnation first appeared among human beliefs because it seems to be as old as humankind itself and it is present in cultures all over the world.

Its first manifestation seems to be in Shamanism. From it the belief in rebirth has passed into all major religions that have developed on earth, accompanying and influencing them throughout their evolution.

There exists an occult and sacred alphabet which the Hebrews attributed to Enoch, the Egyptians to Thoth or Mercurius Trismegistus, the Greeks to Cadmus and Palamedes. This alphabet, which was known to the Pythagoreans, is composed of absolute ideas attached to signs and numbers. - Eliphas Levi, La Clef des Grands Mysteres, (1896)